Icing over Cake

I looked back over my shoulder 3,000 years and saw long trains of camels burdened with frankincense and myrrh and sometimes with gold, pearls, ivory, cinnamon, silks, tortoiseshell, and lapis lazuli. They followed the single road because there was no other; to the north the Rub al Khali, or Empty Quarter, offered hundreds of miles of absolute desiccation; to the south the barren plateau spread only a short distance before it plunged precipitously into the sea
Wendell Phillips, Qataban and Sheba

The last enduring vestigaes of a glorious past, Yemen's fantastic architecture ranges from the surreal old city in Sana'a to towers clinging desperately to every mountain ledge to the achingly beautiful ceilings of mosques in forgotten towns



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